Sunlight

See how these names are feted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life.
Who wore at their hearts the fire's centre.
Born of the sun, they traveled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

Stephen Spender, "I think continually of those who were truly great."

Dear All,
.

Now: John Keats in his epitaph claimed that his name was written on water; Spender (see above) likes those who signed the air. Christ wrote in the Earth (John 8:6). D. H. Lawrence has us imprinting ourselves on space itself:

When fulfilled people die
the essential oil of their experience enters
the veins of living space, and adds a glisten
to the atom, to the body of immortal chaos.
For space is alive
and it stirs like a swan
whose feathers glisten
silky with the oil of distilled experience.

I think that all of these, water, earth, air, space, are forms of writing in the light. 

Next week, taking off from the exercises given by David Spangler in Working with Subtle Energies, pp. 43-45, we will consider ourselves as beings of light affected by the sun and speaking back to the sun in three registers: as physical beings, as energetic or subtle beings, and as spiritual beings. 

Physically, this is not hard to picture.  The sun streams down light and warmth.  It affects our skins and eyes and total bodily constitution both directly and indirectly.  And we ray out light and warmth of our own, physically.

Spiritually, also not too tough: Sun as a Being, an entity of infinite wisdom and love.  It is in conversation with the central love and wisdom of our primal, primordial identity.

The middle term, the energetic or subtle, may be the hardest to focus on.  Just as some people can fill a room with their presence, or their fear, or their sparkling wit, and the people in the room are affected, and find their own presence, fear or wit as these qualities rise in answer, so the earth is permeated by the presence of the sun, its subtle body, and our own inner sunlight as a subtle presence rises in answering exchange.

So next week we'll deliberately perform each of these registers of exchange. 

Of course, we're not exclusively creatures of love and wisdom.  We have a lot of psychology that has to be pacified, or set down like six-shooters at the barroom door, before we can enter states of light conversation.  Or no: the muck and jaggedness of a life on earth is just the manure we need to grow the green stem, the dark thorns, and all simultaneously the rose of being.

All blessings to all,

Michael